The Witching Hour

[stillatentdead]

Characters: Granny Weatherwax and whoever she runs into
Content: Traverse gains a witch
Location (including world): First District, Traverse Town
Time of Day: Afternoon (such as it is)
Warnings: None

[Granny was no stranger to dreams.  Anyone had ‘em, from the entirely mundane and embarrassing sort of dreams* to the sorts of dreams that set people on a path and kept ‘em following it.  Those were the dangerous ones, if you didn’t keep an eye out for the warning signs.  The mad could dream, and the dangerously sane too.  She was not, however, particularly familiar with dreams like this one**, and couldn’t be having with this sort of thing anyway.  Dreams were all well and good, but there was no call to have animals with puffballs stuck to their heads and bat wings.  It was against the natural order of things.  Even the idea of creating something out of bits and pieces of things was something she couldn’t really be having with.

Accordingly it took some time before she finally admitted that maybe she could put up with another hanger-on she’d never wanted, ridiculously colored though the things seemed to be.  Dream though it was there was a difference between accepting that fact and bending to the ludicrous rules of this dream.  Besides, she was perfectly capable of defending herself.  She’d simply decided she might as well see what all the fuss had been about.  It certainly wasn’t anything to do with curiosity and anyone who thought otherwise didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about.

It wasn’t like she needed a lizard anyway, even if it was traveling with her. Thus, she payed it no real mind as she set about seeing what she could make of the town. It might have been no dream she knew, but that was absolutely no call to not assume there was a perfectly good reason for her being there. It was just a matter of figuring out what it was.


* Which she quite adamantly did not have, thank you very much.
** Not that she would have admitted to such.  Her pride would never have allowed it.]

Comments

[raisethemoon]

Luna extended one wing slightly, and Noctis chirped once more before circling around to land on her back. "We hath not seen thee before. Art thou new arrived?" she asked, tilting her head at Granny. This must be an older human, she thought; hopefully she had some weapons or magic of her own. At least she had one of the fire-breathing lizard Spirits, if nothing else.

"We art Princess Luna, of Equestria. We hath been here...several weeks, by general estimate." She sighed, ears back. "'Tis difficult for us to tell when the moon doth not move."

[stillatentdead]

Newly arrived, yes. Actually about to admit to that point and in so doing admit to any number of things she had no intent to admitting to herself, much less a stranger (who wasn't even human at that)? Not quite so much. Instead, she turned her attention to the rest of Princess* Luna's comment. The moon in the Discworld wasn't necessarily the easiest to track across the night sky, but it was at least there when you expected it to be.

"Of course it moves," Granny answered, with a surety that spoke to long years of sounding like she knew exactly what she was on about. "You just probably ain't looking hard enough."


*A title she wasn't sold on, to be honest. Who'd ever heard of unicorns having leaders?

[raisethemoon]

Luna raised an eyebrow, her ears going back. The woman had no way to know who she was; she had no rational reason to be offended. Still, she sounded a little put out. "We hath brought night to Equestria for thousands of years. We can tell when a moon is moving, and that one hath not budged for weeks."

She tossed her head, jabbing her horn at the sky with a short flash of light; not a true attempt at moving the moon, but somewhat close to how she would begin. "Nor can we move it ourselves. We suspect 'tis because there is no sun to take its place." The princess shifted her weight uneasily, looking up at the stars. "And yet the locals care not. They think it ordinary."

[stillatentdead]

Unicorns bring night to some ridiculously named country. Now Granny really had heard everything. Unsurprisingly, it was exactly the sort of thing she couldn't be having with at all.*

"Then it ain't a moon, is it?" Granny answered in tones that suggested that she wasn't about to swayed from her decision, regardless of whatever sort of magic Luna was up to. With flash like that it was wizard magic anyway, and there wasn't any point in trusting to wizards to get up to anything good. Even - and especially - if the wizard wasn't even human besides.


*And she be having a discussion with someone** about letting their dreams go about getting into other people's heads.
**Probably Magrat, if she had any guess.

[raisethemoon]

Luna...blinked, and turned to look up at the moon again. Well, that would explain why she hadn't been able to budge it, though she'd been having just as much trouble with the stars. But it was clearly a moon, wasn't it? If anypony should know a moon, it ought to be her.

She turned back to Granny, head tilted slightly. "What dost thou suppose it might be, then?" This was the land of dreams; there was no reason things should really be as they appeared. Mayhaps she was mistaken, or being tricked somehow. She'd put her bits on the latter if the old woman was indeed correct. "Surely no mere illusion could persist for so long, and the others appear to perceive it as we do."

[stillatentdead]

What it was - or wasn't - was none of Granny's concern. It didn't much matter, when the whole damn thing was a dream and an uncommonly bizarre one at that. For all she knew, it might not even really be Discworld and who knew what rules might be anywhere else. Not, of course, that she was going to admit to even that. Uncertainty was hardly something she was going to admit.

"Somethin' that ain't a moon," she answered with a distinct and pronounced sense of surety. "If you wants to know more than that, you can go look yourself."